Got an iPhone and want ShopSavvy? We are VERY close to being ready to submit ShopSavvy to the iTunes market, but we really need your help. We want to test our image recognition across a large number of actual iPhone cameras and barcodes. Our goal is to test on at least 1,000 iPhones and at least that many barcodes. You can help us – i.e. the faster we get this testing completed the faster we will submit ShopSavvy (oh and it will be free). Here is what we need:
- Use your iPhone (tell us which version you have) to take a photo of a barcode.
- Make sure you hold the camera about 3 inches from the barcode (not any farther please).
- Title the file the number of the barcode i.e. 062338796823.jpg (this is important)
- Email the file (with correct title) to support@biggu.com
If you can send one barcode we will be appreciative. If you can send ten we will forever be in your debt. Anyway, thanks for your help (in advanced). Please tell your friends to do the same.
Wow. According to Dan Frommer from the Silicon Alley Insider BlackBerry’s Curve outsold the iPhone last quarter. Wow, again. Smartphones are now 23% of US phone sales (compared with 17% last year at the same time). Best selling smartphones:
1. RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
2. Apple iPhone 3G (all models)
3. RIM BlackBerry Storm
4. RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
5. T-Mobile G1
Adam has joined Big in Japan to build our iPhoneDevTeam. Adam has learned more than his share of lessons on what to do and what not to do when publishing mobile applications. His experience, contacts and burning desire will definately be appreciated here. Welcome Adam!
Our publishing model is so new that many developers wonder why they would want someone to publish their application for them. Well, consumers and brands are going to start getting worried when they see applications like the Baby Shaker approved by Apple for the App store. Consumers assume Apple is watching out for them before they publish an application – hint: they are only looking out for themselves. Consumers and brands need to know who developed/published the applications on their phones – for safety and privacy. Do you think the guy who would create a baby shaker application would think twice about reading your email or stealing your passwords? Maybe… Maybe not. Thank you Sikalosoft for such a horrible example.
I started playing with YouTube back in 2005 and didn’t really get it. I posted a couple of videos, but I wasn’t a consumer (i.e. I didn’t watch other people’s videos unless someone blogged about one). Fast forward to this year and add the Apple TV to the mix. I bought Apple TVs for the office and the house and found myself showing off the Apple TV by playing videos from YouTube.
Soon we started turning on YouTube (via Apple TV) any time we had a few people over. We would each pick a couple of ‘funny’ videos to play and let the system rip. It wasn’t like watching traditional TV, something we would never consider doing with guests, instead it was a different experience. The clips are short. The content is kitsch. The experience in a word is casual. It didn’t hamper our conversation, it enriched the content. YouTube + AppleTV = Great for Small Parties.
Now with my iPhone I find myself doing the same thing. People want to see how it works and after I show them the visual voice mail I show off YouTube. People are amazed. YouTube finally makes sense for me. Will I watch hours of YouTube? Never. Will I watch 2-3 three minute clips per week? Definitely.
Web 2.0 junkies, we have the perfect iPhone site for you ~ GetLeaflets. Mike Arrington pointed out the site earlier today in a post titled, “GetLeaflets: Must-Have iPhone App”. Very nice work. Note to guys: this is what I was talking about!
We are playing with the latest IM solution for the iPhone – FlickIM. Jury is still out, but it works…
iPhoneDevCamp was an excellent event. Thanks to Raven, Whurley and Dom for putting it together, we really enjoyed it. Over 51 applications were started or built over the weekend including one built by the Big in Japan team. We decided to build a tiny application that would use the ability the iPhone has to determine the orientation of its screen. Based on how you held your iPhone you would signify your agreement or disagreement with the speaker. We call it iPhoneVote and ironically it was voted one of the ‘top ten apps‘ from the event.
Other cool applications included: AppMarks, PickleView, Fluther, The Pool, itunes Remote-o-Matic, Tilt and moPhaic (read about them here). The coolest hack from the event was called the Fluid Navigation Hack as described by Andrew:
- Have you ever heard of Firebug? It’s the absolute best Firefox extension for developers. If you are building applications for the iPhone, it might be your greatest debugging tool. But Firebug for the iPhone, iBug.js, is not my favorite app. It’s Joe’s liguid navigation hack. Almost 25% of all apps presented at iPhoneDevCamp used it. Hewitt’s Javascript and CSS package mirror the iPhone’s iPod application, and use a fluid navigation scheme that will become commonplace to any iPhone user. This is my favorite app because so many iPhone hackers used it this weekend as a backbone for their application. This framework will work nicely for future iPhone development because it’s lightweight, elegant, and comfortable for anyone trying to navigate their Apple smart phone. The source code is available here. This would be my starting point if I were to develop an iPhone app.
